"Ida," her father faltered, after they had reached the privacy of his room, "what does your telegram mean? What is important?"
"YOU are to me. O father, please, please forgive me," and she put her arms around his neck and burst into a passion of tears.
The bewildered man began to tremble. "Can it—can it be that my daughter has a heart?" he muttered.
"Yes, father, but it's broken because of my cruel treatment of you;
I now hope better days are coming for us all."
He held her away from him and looked into her face with a longing intensity that suggested a soul perishing for the lack of love and hope.
"Father, father, I can't bear that look. Oh, God forgive me, how
I have wronged you!" and she buried her face on his shoulder again.
"Ida," he said, slowly and pleadingly, "be very careful—be sure this is not a passing impulse, a mere remorseful twinge of conscience. I've been hoping for years—I would have prayed, if I dared to—for some token that I was not a burden to you and your mother. You seemed to love me some when you were little, but as you grew older you grew away from me. I've tried to forget that I had a heart. I've tried to become a beast because it was agony to be a man. why I have lived I scarcely know. I thought I had suffered all that I could suffer in this world, but I was mistaken. I left this place last Monday with the fear that my beautiful daughter was giving her love to a man even baser than I am, base and low from choice, base and corrupt in every fibre of his soul and body, and from that hour to this it has seemed as if I were ground between two millstones," and he shuddered as if smitten with an ague. "Ida," he concluded piteously, "I'm too weak, I'm too far gone to bear disappointment. This is more than an impulse, is it not? You will not throw yourself away? Oh, Ida, my only child, if you could be in heart what you were in your face as you greeted me to-night, I could die content!"
For a few minutes the poor girl could only sob convulsively on his breast. At last she faltered brokenly:
"Yes, father—it is an impulse—an impulse from heaven; but I shall pray daily that it be not a passing one. I—I have lost confidence in myself, but with my Saviour's help, I will try to be a loving daughter to you and make your wishes first in everything."
"Great God!" he muttered, "can this be true?"